Still Life with Murder is the first installment in The Gilded Age Mystery series by Patricia Ryan, writing as P.B. Ryan. I’m beginning to realize that, while I enjoy a good mystery, I really enjoy those that are set in an interesting time period. That is, one that is not the present. Honestly, the present is kind of boring, for mysteries at least.

Set in Boston at the end of the Civil War, this book follows Nell Sweeney, a tenacious governess from the wrong side of the tracks. The eldest son of her employer, thought to have died at Andersonville has reappeared in Boston as a murder suspect.

Naturally, it doesn’t look good for the Army surgeon turned gambler/opium fiend, but Nell is convinced of his innocence and sets out to prove it. Nell has some secrets of her own, and interestingly, all is not revealed by the end of the book. So now, I’ll need to read the next one: Murder in a Mill Town. And I probably will.